A researcher at the Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in upstate NY received a $465,0000 grant to study a potentially deadly bacteria.

Meenakshi Malik, assistant professor in the college’s Department of Basic and Social Sciences, was awarded the three-year grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.

She will study Franciscella tularenis, a bacteria that has been classified by the Centers for Disease Control as a Category A bioterrorism agent. Organisms in that class are defined as “high-priority agents that pose a risk to national security.”

Other agents in that category include pathogens that cause anthrax, plague and smallpox.

Francisella is particularly dangerous because it can be easily aerosolized and survive in small droplets for weeks and months at a time. If infected, the mortality rate can be as high as 60 percent.

Currently, there is no FDA approved vaccine for the Franciscella tularenis bacteria.

“When someone is infected by a disease-causing organism, the body’s immune system instinctively responds as the first line of defense. But with Francisella, the immune response is effectively muted in the first 48 to 72 hours following infection. What we don’t know is how Francisella stifles the immune system or what causes the protective immune response to ‘kick in’ after this initial period,” Malik said.

She will use a live vaccine strain of Francisella for her research work at the college. The strain is harmless for humans but is a surrogate model for the more virulent strains of the bacteria.